Elon Musk loses legal battle against Tesla critic Randeep Hothi, defamation case not ruled out

Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s appeal to overturn a
defamation lawsuit, filed by a company’s critic against him for conducting online
hate campaign was rejected by a California state judge. Judge Julia Spain gave a
ruling on Wednesday denying Musk’s defence that the case filed by Randeep Hothi was
baseless and should be thrown out as an attempt to silence the billionaire’s
free speech.

Hothi, a graduate student of
University of Michigan had filed a complaint in Alameda Country Superior Court,
last August and highlighted two incidents from two years back. However, both
the incident were claimed to be harmless by him.

Also read: Etsy shares rise after Elon Musk tweets about how he ‘kinda loves it’

Following this, Musk wrote an email
to an online technology editor and complained about Hothi as a liar. He also
accused him of “almost killing Tesla employees” while he was driving away from the
sales center.

However, Hothi narrated two completely
different incidents from what Musk had explained. Hothi, in the first incident mentioned
that when he went to Tesla sales center in Fremont, California in February 2019
for a research, he was questioned by a security guard. In an another incident
in April 2019, he told that while driving he noticed a Tesla test car of which
he clicked pictures and later shared it online.

Also read: Elon Musk’s Tesla announces 2020 as its first profitable year with $721 million earnings

Musk also tried to claim in the court
that whatever, he said regarding the incident was of public interest and Hothi’s
complaint should be overtuned on these ground.